Casually Evolving Creative Technology Systems

This position paper will describe the early stages of a development effort in which an interactive evolutionary design approach is being applied to the domain of technology-based system development, in a new media art and design context. These systems connect different technologies and techniques in order to process and transform data of one type into another. For example, location data might be used to select a relevant network information feed, the text of which drives geometry generation, which in turn could be sent to a 3D printer that would produce a sculpture. While the flexibility of this problem domain is idiosyncratic to our interdisciplinary new media environment, the target physical context for using a creativity support tool, and the context’s effect on creative output is rather the primary research focus. The goal is to explore the possibilities of what might be termed "casual design", analogous to the “casual gaming” genre in which games are played by anyone, where ever they might find a few spare minutes, rather than requiring significant time and hardware commitments.